With the start of the Student Success Center, Director of First-Year Experience and Orientation, Chris Brown, moved his office from Falconio Hall to Plassmann Hall at the beginning of this academic year.
(1) Along with a new office comes a new way of decorating. As soon as you enter his office in Plassmann 102B, the first thing that grabs the eye is his door. Decorated from top to bottom in door tags, not only is it a fun touch, but there’s a history behind it, as well.
Before he worked in FYE, he was a part of the Residential Education Department as residential director and housing coordinator, which was the position that brought him to St. Bonaventure University. Dating back to as early as 2007, the door tags are all connected with different students who worked as Resident Assistants, whom he has fond memories of. Some of those students later became staff members, and the tradition continued to orientation, where his orientation tags began.
Even after moving off campus, he kept the ones he had and his collection still began to grow, continuing with his positions on campus.“Every time I have moved, I have brought the door tags with me that I had,” Brown said.
Although some tags didn’t survive him moving them or got ripped down while he lived in an apartment in Shay-Loughlen Hall, they managed to pile up.
“I never took them down, so they just kept getting added year after year,” Brown said.
(2) Then, if you look straight ahead from when you walk in the door, there is a cluster of framed photographs of past orientation teams sitting on the window ledge, which he jokingly referred to as his “orientation shrine.”
“It’s pictures of all the orientation teams I’ve worked with and just the fond memories of each group and the dynamics built while working over the summer,” Brown said.
(3) To tie into the orientation-related items displayed in his office, Brown proudly displays a copy of Sneetches by Dr. Seuss, as many may remember from freshman orientation. This was no ordinary copy of Sneetches, however.
The 2016 orientation team surprised him with a personalized copy of the book where they pasted their rewritten version of Sneetches over the original text to make it Bona’s related to remember the summer. The members of the orientation team also signed the front of the book in Sharpie.
(4) Sitting next to his copy of Sneetches is a picture of the outside of a church with the words “pax et bonum.” This was taken on a pilgrimage to Assisi that president emeritus, Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., asked him to attend with Nichole Gonzalez, the interim vice president for Student Affairs.
For Brown, this is representative of Bona’s, as “pax et bonum” means ‘peace and all good.’ He said the picture is not only a sentimental reminder of his trip, but where he made connections to the origins of peace and all good.
“I have a better understanding of the university’s traditions and why it’s a part of the Franciscan tradition,” he said.
(5) As you continue around his room, on the top shelf of his bookcase in the corner of his office is every All Bonaventure Reads book since the program began with each author’s signature.
“I’m still looking for a way to display them so they’re out and available because in my old office in Fal, the covers of the books were on the wall and we moved those out into the main hallway as a public display,” Brown said.
(6) Hanging from the lamp in the back corner on the other side of his office are two tassels, from the graduating classes of 2013 and 2014. As the class advisor for those two years, Brown worked closely with the class officers and watched them progress from freshman to senior year.
“It was fun working with them through all the senior events, commencement events and activities, so I kept the tassels from each of those years,” he said.
(7) On the edge of his desk sits a wooden box filled with four different silver toys and a maze, which Brown recently brought into his office from a box he unpacked in his apartment. Since bringing it to his office, Brown said he mainly uses it when someone is talking with him.
“If a student is coming by and we’re talking about something, they can pick up one of those puzzles and fidget while we go through whatever we’re going through.”
However, Brown also uses them as a time killer. He said one of the toys he’s only been able to solve four times, and the most recent time, he didn’t even realize he had completed it.
“All of a sudden, it works,” he said. “Like this morning, I was talking with a grad student and fidgeting with it and then it was apart in my hands and I didn’t even know how it happened.”
Anyone who walks into Brown’s office can clearly see how it’s filled with items relating to his time at Bonaventure, whether it be a banner he has hanging up on his wall, a painting from the Quick Center or endless mementos of his different roles on campus.
